LETTER: ‘8647’ sign only meant get 47th president out of office

To Ozaukee Press:

Peggy Klug’s letter to the editor in the Aug. 7 issue about the protest and counter-protest on the Exit 100 bridge over I-43 needs a correction. The protester’s sign stating “8647” does not, as she indicated, call for the assassination of Trump. Every dictionary is clear. To “86” is slang for “throwing out,” “to get rid of.” It’s a mistake easily made.   

The counter-protesters’ signage indicated they were from the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), founded by a right-wing Catholic Brazilian. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights, TFP is “virulently anti-LGBT” and anti-women’s reproductive choice based on their signs on the bridge. 

They protested in suits, ties and red sashes. All 18 that I documented in a photograph were men and young boys, without a single person with a womb in their group.  

No one disputes that the counter-protesters had every right to be there. However, a first-person report to me indicated that rather than taking an open area on the bridge where the TFP males could stand without intimidating people already assembled, they chose to stand directly behind the protesters. 

In the spirit of “good” trouble and nonviolence as modeled by civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis, who this protest was honoring, the anti-Trump protesters moved across the road. 

The photograph printed by the Ozaukee Press was not captioned correctly. The cultish conservative group in the picture printed by the Press, standing with our protesters and signs, was not “remembering” or honoring John Lewis with “Honk for the Unborn” signs mixed in. While the original protesters were grateful for Ozaukee Press coverage, the photographic caption was an error that slipped through, as errors occasionally do.

Nancy Camden 

Mequon